The Unexpected Gift
by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: Chapter 2, from Dina Kovac's POV. "I know that Luka is thirty-five years old, but I can never shake off the memory of him as a child, always keep thinking of him as the baby of the family."
1. Luka: Welcome Home

_"The Unexpected Gift" by VjeraNadaLjubav_

**Summary:** "Usually, a person would be looking forward to returning to his homeland and seeing his family for the first time in almost ten years, but all I want to do is turn around, get back on the plane and return to Chicago."  
**Rating:** PG  
**Disclaimer:** Dang it. Luka's not mine. Grrr. He belongs to NBC, WB, Amblin, Constant C and whoever else owns him. Danijela, Marko and Jasna belong to them too. But the rest of his family is mine - all mine!  
**Spoilers:** "The Greatest of Gifts" – sort of.  
**Acknowledgements:** Thanks to Caran for – well, just being Caran. Also, unending gratitude for Noa, for her encouragement and many good Luby fics to keep my feeble Luby spirit up. Also, a random thank you to Caryn, Raechel and Emily again. Friends like you are rare…  
**Author's note: **Well – just imagine they talk to each other in Croatian. I could probably write the whole thing in Croatian with the help of a dictionary and my trusty buddies Jelena and Maya, but then most of the readers wouldn't understand what Luka's taking about. Any mistakes, in writing or in depiction of Luka's former life are mine, since my beta readers are hiding and all of my Croatian friends have better things to do than being on the Internet all day. I'm on a verge of a nervous breakdown - so I basically really don't care if I make mistakes anymore...  
**Author's note part 2:** I have no idea how this will end, so if you have a good idea or something that you want to see happen, mention it in the review. And who knows, maybe you'll see it in the fic… if I won't go crazy before I finish it.

Chapter One - "Welcome Home"

Usually, a person would be looking forward to returning to his homeland and seeing his family for the first time in almost ten years, but all I want to do is turn around, get back on the plane and return to Chicago. Imagine a family reunion - multiply it by several occasional alcoholics, add some neurotics, mix in some widowers and put in a relative who has been away from the family for ten years, and you get our little get-together. As far as I know, all of the immediate family will be here, as well as some cousins and all of us will be squeezing into Dina's apartment by day and the nearest hotels by night. I am supposed to be staying at the house Vesna shares with my father, but now I'd rather stay at the hotel. The thought of seeing my relatives scares me. I haven't seen them for a very long time, and I have changed so much that I don't know how to behave myself around them, what to say, what to do. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have come at all, but if I did that, I would have disappointed my father - and I will never allow myself to do that.

I left Croatia almost nine years ago, and now I look nothing like the man who left then, with an expensive suit in place of jogging pants and a worn sweater, with a mask of careful indifference instead of a mask of numbness. I am a different man. When I left I was a refugee who had just received a passport of a newly minted country, and now I am an expatriate with a Green Card. Sometimes it seems that there is nothing left of the man who left nine years ago, nothing but memories of what he once was. In my mind, he has forever remained a name on the list of missing Vukovar residents, forever lost. I am sure that my family will be expecting him, not me. My siblings will want their baby brother back, my father his youngest son, my nephews their _ujo _or _tec'e_ Luka, all of them wanting someone who doesn't exist anymore, who is now just a man who pretends that he doesn't have a past.

I am also not looking forward to seeing them because I am sure that there will be at least one family member who'll hate me for not coming to Mama's funeral. She could not deal with the war, with what happened to me and to my family and one day she just could not go on living. Vesna, my oldest sister, called me on the phone, and in tears, told me to come to the funeral. When I mumbled a stupid excuse and said that I couldn't, she screamed that I was not her brother anymore before slamming the phone down. But how could I go? I could barely make myself go outside my apartment when I wasn't at work, and she wanted me to go back, to go back when there was still fighting, and I could not make myself go. But I still could grieve, so the day that Mama was supposed to be buried, I took a sick day from work, went home, turned off all the light, and just lay in bed all day, crying for the first time in many years. Vesna called me back a week later and we made up – after all, she was dependent on my salary, so she was afraid to alienate me.

There will probably be an unpleasant confrontation with my brother as well. I have talked on the phone with almost every member of my family in the last couple of years, but not with Janko. I can't make myself talk to him. We used to be close as children, but we grew apart, and our political views have drastically grown apart over the years. Janko made some bad choices, which I found out about, and since then, I've ignored his existence. He's the only one in the family who has not asked me for money – almost everyone else has. I currently earn well over a hundred thousand dollars at the hospital as an attending. Almost a quarter gets swallowed up in taxes, and I wire about a quarter of what is left to various family members. The remaining money is still quite comfortable to live on, and since I live in a hotel room and drive a car which was new when I was still in medical school, I can afford to travel first class anywhere I want to – and I enjoy that ability, because I hate being in overcrowded spaces – but that's yet another thing I don't want to think about…

I sigh and follow the horde of passengers towards passport control. Almost everyone, save for some confused American tourists is speaking Croatian, and it is so strange, so unusual and so scary that I want to go back again, to leave Croatian the role of the language of my past, the language of my fears, nightmares and long distance phone conversations, and not of the everyday use I hear around me.

Finally, it's my turn to show my passport, and I give my crisp, almost unused Croatian passport to the bored border patrol officer in the booth, who has been suffering from several moronic American tourists for the last ten minutes. He stares at it for a moment, his face reflecting the obvious struggle of his brain trying to switch back into Croatian-speaking mode, and finally he grins and looks up.

"You here for vacation?" he asks informally, as he searches for a stamp in a drawer of his desk.

"Yes," I say nervously, and mentally will him to work faster, but fail. He finally locates the stamp and stamps my passport.

He reaches it to me and I take it and briskly walk away, feeling a great need to leave the airport before I have a panic attack.

A half an hour later, I find myself exiting customs, with no memory of either getting there or having retrieved my luggage, and along with several other travelers I am thrust out into the crowded meeting area and moments later enthusiastically greeted by one of my sisters. For a moment, I am not sure which one it is, but after smelling her perfume I can tell it is definitely Dina, the younger twin.

After she is done pushing my face into her hair she releases me and I finally see her face. She has aged, but for a woman who is fifty she looks quite good. After all, not that many fifty-year old women can manage to look good in a mini-skirt, and Dina manages to attract quite a few glances from passing men and jealous glares from other women.

Dina is quite unique. From all the twins that I have known, I have never seen two so unlike each other as my sisters. They look the same, and this is their only similarity. Dina is a risk-taker, a creative nature who is unpredictable and very liberal, whereas Vesna is overtly careful, sometimes mind-numbingly dull and possibly still convinced that God will smite Dina one day for her affairs. Dina is so unlike the rest of the family that she jokingly says that the stork that brought her and Vesna let go of her too early and she bumped her head. She is the definite free spirit of the family, since she has managed to survive the last thirty years as an artist.

"_Cura_, you're all grown up!" she exclaims loudly and I cringe, since no one has used this particular nickname for many years, and now perhaps half of the airport has heard it. When I was a baby, I had long hair, and my brother kept thinking that I was a girl, so he introduced me to curious adults as his sister "Luka, the girl." My sisters found that incredibly hilarious, and have been using it to torment me ever since.

I manage a shaky smile and a hello, and follow her outside. She is telling me something, but I have no idea what she is saying, because I'm once again feeling overwhelmed. I have not been in Zagreb since 1992, and I feel like an outsider, and although the changes are bound to be small and not very significant - for me it will be a foreign town, and not the one I spent six years of my life in.

When we reach my sister's car I am finally torn out of my morbid musings by a rare happy thought. My sister still drives the same poison green Yugo she mysteriously acquired one day in 1975. I learned how to drive in this car, and Dina nearly killed me when I barely avoided driving it into Lake Jarun on a particularly wild night in my youth.

My sister, fed up with my trance-like state, takes my suitcase and squeezes it into the trunk, and then pointedly opens the door and holds it for me with mock courteousness. I manage to look a bit guilty for my absentmindedness and get into the car, finding that the Yugo still manages to make me contemplate my knees, since they are always dangerously close to my nose whenever I'm in it. Dina gets in, turns on the radio so loud that the car starts vibrating and drives off like she's in a brand new race car and not in a 25-year old example of Yugoslavia's failure in car manufacturing. Deciding to break the silence, she makes the first move.

"Thinking too much can hurt you," Dina says, or rather screams over the happy song blaring from the radio.

"Sorry - it's a habit." I realize I should be polite and try some small talk, but for some reason I can't come up with a single thing to say. Any normal person that hasn't seen his or her sister for ten years would be bursting with things to say, but all I seem to think of is going back to Chicago.

"Oh no - it must be bad, then." Dina laughs, turns the volume down slightly, and smiles at me, and I can't help but smile back, because at this moment I feel like I belong somewhere, that someone here has remembered me all of those years. But bliss doesn't last long, since Dina asks the dreaded question that ruins any illusions I've had about this car ride being without problems.

"How have you been?" Short and to the point, and this question can ruin my mood faster then any other. I hate the concern in her voice, and dread this question just as I always do, even more so when it comes from Dina, who is perhaps the person I feel closest to in my family.

"Fine, I think." If this isn't vague - I don't know what is.

"How fine?" she presses on, obviously not accepting my bullshit answer. Something about the tone of her voice reminds me of plates breaking against a wall.

"I'm feeling better then in Baltimore," I elaborate.

Dina sighs with exasperation and shrugs her shoulders.

"I'll leave you be for now," she promises, sounding somehow disappointed, not in my reply but in something that is beyond my understanding. She suddenly bends down to get something out of her handbag and nearly swerves the car off the highway. Just before the Yugo flies into a ditch she rights herself up and directs it back into the lane. I nervously recheck the seatbelt, and continue to stare at the road ahead.

After hearing some rustling sounds I look back at Dina and see that she has extracted a cigarette out of a pack and now is rummaging for a lighter in the pockets of her jacket, muttering curses under her breath. Finally, she locates it, lights the cigarette, and jams it between her lips, grabbing the steering wheel before the car can once again try to dive into the ditch.

She takes the cigarette between her fingers and holds it as she breathes out the smoke, and I can't help but stare at the Marlboro with a stain of her bright red lipstick, and her long nails, painted a blood-red color.

While I stare, she tracks down the cigarette pack once again and thrusts it in my direction. I startle and hit my elbow on the window, and begin muttering a swearword when I realize I am about to say "Fuck!" in English. I've been away for too long.

"I don't smoke anymore," I mutter, half-truthfully.

"Since when?" Dina asks, putting the pack into her pocket.

"Can we leave it be?" I snap, getting angry at Dina's incessant questioning. I am dangerously close to getting out of the car and walking to Zagreb.

"Fine, fine, no need to yell," she murmurs, lifting her hands up from the wheel for a moment to show that she's giving up with the questions for now, but still, can't resist a last one. "Can you at least tell me something about your new job?"

I stare for a moment at the cigarette smoke escaping her lips and can't come up with a polite reply.

"It's like any other job."

"Fine. I get it. I'll shut up," she says sourly and turns the radio up again. Some eerily happy hit song from a long time ago fills the cold silence between us, the singer going on and on about how easy it would be if he didn't have to love his beloved. I pointedly stare out the car window, not really seeing anything other then the gray winter sky.

The rest of the ride is reasonably quiet and the tension in the car has gone beyond "you can cut it with a knife" cliché. I become more aware of my surroundings when the car valiantly tries to drive up a steep hill to Vesna's house, and after a long succession of muffled curses from Dina and noises from the Yugo that sound remarkably like a small elephant dying, it finally succeeds, getting so accelerated that it nearly drives up the terrace steps. To prevent us from arriving right into the house, Dina stops the car rather forcefully, and I get a view of my knees that is closer then any I ever had or wanted to have.

Dina pulls the key out of the ignition, gets out of the car and slams the door. I closely examine the material of my trousers for a moment, which is not hard since my knees are still in front of my eyes, sigh, unbend myself from the interesting position into which I got twisted when Dina slammed her foot on the brake and then get out of the car as well.

Dina ignores me as I wrestle the suitcase out of the trunk, and after I finally get it out she slams the trunk and marches up the steps to the door, which she just might slam when I'm about to enter. I cautiously edge closer and am pleased to see that she is holding it for me despite the fact that I pissed her off. I manage a small crooked smile, take a deep breath, and walk inside, hoping once again that I will not regret this visit.


	2. Dina:Home Is Where The Heart Is Or Is It

Chapter Two - "Home Is Where The Heart Is… Or Is It?"

The most annoying thing about being grown up is holding your feelings in. When you're young you long to be grown up and free, but when you grow up you realize that the only freedom is in being young, expressing your thoughts in a way unrestrained by social norms, by culture, by politeness. Something else that is very hard is to think of someone you watched grow up as an adult. I know that Luka is thirty-five years old, but I can never shake off the memory of him as a child, always keep thinking of him as the baby of the family. He's taller then me now, but I remember a time when he barely reached my waist, remember when I could lift him up and hold him in my arms. I wish I could do that right now – hold him, tell him that I can fix all his problems, but I can't. He's troubled by something much more complicated then a broken toy, and it hurts me to see him so strange, so unlike the brother I used to know.

This year Tata wanted everyone in the family to be here for Christmas. Much to our surprise, Luka said he would come, and I volunteered to pick him up. I did not know what to expect – he has dutily sent photographs of himself every year, but one can not learn much from a photograph. Over the years, the photographs became rarer, and we only got one this year, a serious Luka in his lab coat looking slightly away from the camera. I don't ever remember him being serious – but I guess it is a part of growing up, the changing of behavior and appearance. With age, we lose things we once thought to be permanent, and are surprised at the reflection in the mirror one day, wondering who the hell the ugly old fart is that is reflected there instead of you.

My sister, her daughters and our sister-in-law all crowd into the hall and nearly throw themselves on Luka. He drops his suitcase and tries to look for a way out, but he can't escape, and for the next couple of minutes he just stands there, petrified, while enthusiastically greeted by Vesna, Marija, Kristijana and Suzana. As a payback for his behavior during the car ride, I stand aside and watch. When I feel that he has had enough greetings, I move in, and with a practiced move, separate him from the women. Luka looks slightly dazed, and there's lipstick on his cheek – Vesna's, judging by its ugly color. My brain, seemingly fixated on him as a child, flashes back to Vesna's wedding thirty-two years ago, Vesna kissing a three-year old Luka on the cheek, Luka laughing and running to me so I could get lipstick and cake off his sticky face.

Getting back to the present, I get a handkerchief out of my pocket, lick at a corner and rub it against the lipstick, managing to get most of it off. Luka still looks like he has been hit with a shovel and stands there looking like he has dropped down from the sky. Finally, something in his head clicks and he mumbles, "It's very nice to see you," while staring at the floor.

"You have grown up," Vesna nags, clasping her hands together and producing a smile that nearly cracks her face in two. She's my sister, but she can be an annoying asshole at times. Yes, if you haven't seen him for ten years – he's definitely grown up.

Luka's smile becomes almost desperate and I realize that I have to negotiate again.

"He's just gotten here – let him change, let him rest for a while."

Luka looks at me gratefully and gets hold of his suitcase again. Kristijana and Marija decide to take on the job of helping their Ujo Luka to his room and begin to chatter, updating Luka on the newest fashions and music bands. He looks relieved to be freed from Vesna and disappears up the stairs with the girls talking away about what skirts are popular this year. Suzana remembers about something she has to buy and runs out to the store. Vesna grimaces and retreats to the kitchen.

I remain in the hall, thinking about what I just saw. I've just realized how much of my brother I had lost to the war. In my mind, I didn't expect him to be like this – I hoped that he'd still be the way I last saw him, almost ten year ago – a smile constantly on his face, always ready to argue about any conceivable topic, full of energy, happy, innocent in some way. He has always been the quiet one, but considering that being quiet in our family is stopping to breathe between sentences, he was pretty normal. Now, there's almost nothing left of him. He is like a ghost – silent, passive, scared of talking with his own sisters, like a stranger in his family's house. There are lines and wrinkles on his face where there weren't any, traces of gray creeping into his black hair, dark circles under his eyes, age and life leaving their marks on him. I want to scream that it is not fair, that for all the shit he has went through he deserves a new life without troubles, but whoever is in charge of life wouldn't listen to me, just as always.

After thinking about all of that depressing crap I decide that what I really need is a drink. I walk into the kitchen and pour myself some rakija I keep hidden in the back the cupboard in case I am in a bad mood, which seems to be quite often these days.

"Isn't it a bit early to be drinking?" Vesna remarks sarcastically, trying to look bitchy and pious at the same time.

"It's never too early for a good glass of rakija," I mutter, trying not to scream at her. This is one of the times when I wonder how we managed to share the same womb without killing each other for nine months.

"You're a drunk," Vesna murmurs.

"And you're a bitch," I shoot back, pouring myself another glass.

Vesna grimaces and her face becomes even uglier.

"There is no need for name-calling," she says, her tone deliberately calm, but sounding like she'd like nothing more then to strangle me. "You have to realize that drinking like this is not healthy. Why do you not come to church with me on Sunday – maybe Luka can come too-""

"Fuck you and your church," I spit out, starting to get annoyed. Great, we have been alone in a room for less then five minutes and I already want to kill her. She glares at me, her eyes full of hatred now. "I've told you many times I am not interested. And don't even mention the church to Luka, or I'm going to make you regret it."

"Fucking sinner," Vesna hisses to herself, but still loud enough for me to hear. "You will go to hell for this."

"Gladly," I retort.

Vesna starts banging pots and mutters something along the lines of "fuck her infidel house" and I snicker into my glass. God, I love to annoy her.

"Luka seems a bit quiet," she says tersely, the pots still producing a cacophony of sounds.

"He barely talked in the car," I say, and fill up the shot glass again.

"Give him time," Vesna mutters, for a moment stopping the pot symphony. "I think he is just tired from the road."

"I can give him all week, but he is still not going to be the old Luka."

Vesna bangs a pot particularly hard against the sink and curses again. She gives up on banging pots and starts nervously checking on the stove, her shoulders shaking slightly when she thinks I am not looking. For a moment, I feel sorry for her and want to put the alcohol away. Before she divorced her husband and moved away, he'd beat the crap out of her when he was drunk. I know that because I was the one who actually threw him out at last. Vesna used to be different when we were young. The life she got changed her a lot, made her so unlike herself that I at times think that I am the only one in the family remaining the same. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, since I don't know how I look to others.

Our family was so different just ten years ago. I know many people who have been barely touched by the war, who have been able to not think about it every day, but our family had the bad luck of losing whatever sanity it had to it. The war took a miserable life and two good ones and made them terrible, destroying the good that was left in us, killing whatever little innocence was left in us. In case of Janko, the war damaged his body, but he himself damaged his soul. Vesna's life was hell long before the war. Luka is the most tragic victim in the family, because the damned war took away something that he deserved and that he was not supposed to lose, because he should not have suffered and he could have had a good life that he had truly earned. I don't count myself because I have never tied my life to anyone's, and thus I never had anyone to lose, and my life outside the family has been free of obligations.

I really wish my mother was alive right now, more then I usually do. Somehow, my mother was always able to mediate any conflict in the family, to calm down the warring parties and make them discuss their disagreements over coffee and cookies. But she is dead, and her children are a bunch of fucked up, sick people with enough problems to depress any psychiatrist. The pessimistic drunk, the holier-than-thou bitch, the asshole cripple and the damaged soul, quite different from the happy children they once were.

I pour myself another glass. The last one today, I promise myself. My liver isn't what it used to be – I really should cut down on the alcohol, but when life sucks,  
it's the only thing that keeps me from going nuts. I raise the glass in a silent toast to the insanity of the Kovac family and drink it in one gulp.

**Author's note: **This chapter is dedicated to my fan Andy – thanks for cheering me up!


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